“Aha!” the sick man interrupted him; “she has come?  Very well.  Let her come in.  Only the little one ...  I don’t wish her to come ... to-day.”

Suffering was visible in his eyes, this time not bodily suffering.

The door opened, with the rustling of a silk dress.  A tall, well-developed, and decidedly handsome woman appeared on the threshold.  She glanced at the pain-stricken face, which smiled contemptuously toward her.  In a moment she was beside the general, kneeling beside him on the carpet, bending close to him, and pressing his hand, as she repeated in a despairing whisper: 

“Oh, Georges!  Georges!  Is it really you, my poor friend?”

It would be hard to define the expression of rapidly changing emotions which passed over the sick man’s face, which made his breast heave, and his great heart quiver and tremble painfully.  Displeasure and pity, sympathy and contempt, anger and grief, all were expressed in the short, sharp, bitter laugh, and the few words which escaped his lips when he saw his little daughter timidly following her mother into his room.

“Do not teach her to lie!” and he nodded toward the child, and turned toward the wall, with an expression of pain and pity on his face.  The lawyer and the priest hastened to take their leave and disappear.

“Ah!  Sinners! sinners!” muttered the latter, as he descended the stairs.

“Things are not in good shape between them?” asked Lobnitchenko.  “They don’t get on well together?”

“How should they be in good shape, when he came here to get a divorce?” whispered the priest, shaping his fur cap.  “But God decided otherwise.  Even without a divorce, he will be separated forever from his wife!”

“I don’t believe he is so very far gone.  He is a stalwart old man.  Perhaps he will pull through,” went on the man of law.

“God’s hand is over all,” answered the priest, shrugging his shoulders.  And so they went their different ways.

II

“Olga!” cried the sick man, without turning round, and feeling near him the swift movement of his wife, he pushed her away with an impatient movement of his hand, and added, “Not you! my daughter Olga!”

“Olga!  Go, my child, papa is calling you,” cried the general’s wife in a soft voice, in French, to the little girl, who was standing undecidedly in the center of the room.

“Can you not drop your foreign phrases?” angrily interrupted the general.  “This is not a drawing-room!  You might drop it, from a sense of decency.”

His voice became shrill, and made the child shudder and begin to cry.  She went to him timidly.

The general looked at her with an expression of pain.  He drew her toward him with his left hand, raising the right to bless her.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!” he whispered, making the sign of the cross over her.  “God guard you from evil, from every bad influence....  Be kind ... honest ... most of all, be honest!  Never tell lies.  God guard you from falsehood, from lying, even more than from sorrow!”